


It is my duty to do what I must, for those I consider Important

by momopeachchild



Series: Dragon Age Writings [20]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-16
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22281832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momopeachchild/pseuds/momopeachchild
Summary: A little exercise in what if's. What if Lavellan had a life before her clan? What would it have been like, and what would lead her there?Or, What if the Inquisitor was a Tal'Vashoth Viddithari?
Series: Dragon Age Writings [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/210650
Kudos: 2





	It is my duty to do what I must, for those I consider Important

_Sataareth kadan hass-toh issala ebasit.  
It is my purpose to do what I must for those I consider important._  
  
It was a six day walk, from the village she didn’t remember to the Kont-aar compound. Six days carried on her mother’s back, sickly and in desperate need of help, of food and medicine and a better chance at life. It took six days for a small elf child known as Amara, to reach a new life. One with no name, only a job title. No mother, only Tamassrans, one a Kossith Qunari, one an Elven Viddathari to teach her, guide her, and show her what it meant to live under the Qun. Of course, she was too young and too ill to remember her mother as more than passing glimpses of long hair, gold earrings and elf root forever on her hands. There was nothing like that for her father, and she wasn’t sure if she ever had one. It didn’t matter. Once she was moved from the medical house, she was put with a group of other Viddathari children, all of those who knew how to read and write both the common language of the foreigners and that of the Qunari.  
  
It was fairly easy for her to pick up, and soon she could speak, read, and write both. It was a useful skill, one that would lead her to clerical work, or perhaps working with outsiders when trading. It was a good life, a useful life, one that would help her people, but there was another skill that she had that made her more valuable than just a clerk. She would sit and listen, soaking in conversations around her, and one day she overheard two adults speaking of dangerous things. Worried, she ran to her Tama and told her everything she heard, eyes wide with fear, and her Tama assured her she would be safe, that all would be safe, because she came and told her. She went to bed that night, knowing nothing bad would happen, because her Tama had told her.  
  
She reached the age of eleven, and like everyone else she was tested. Her path lay not with simple clerk work, but with the Ben-Hassrath. Her training took her out into Rivaini villages to learn how to be a servant, and understand how to properly function in the world outside of the Qun. It took a while, her first assignment not arriving until she was fifteen, but she was more than ready. It was a simple task, work in an Antivan noble’s house, gather some information, pass it back. Simple. There were a few more missions in Antiva, before she started to work her way out, into the rest of the Free Marches and a couple stints into Orlais and Ferelden.  
  
Around her eighteenth birthday, and her corresponding mission in Starkhaven, Amara met a young dwarven woman, who lived next to the house she worked in. She was a Merchant’s daughter, and always treated her kindly when she saw her. The young dwarf asked her to the Winter Solstice gathering, and there their courtship started. It was a delightful six months, slipping out at the end of the day to leave her messages at the dead drop and then going to go see her love. Until she was told that her love was to be married to another dwarf, a man of better standings. It would bring her family wealth and better standings. Amara let her go without any fuss, and went back to the merchant the next day to see if she could return the ring she’d purchased.  
  
After her heart break, she started to feel more disillusioned with the Qun, about how she could be helping to make the world better, when all she saw around her was greed and despair. Sending a letter back, she informed her superiours she would be returning briefly. Passing through Kirkwall, Amara booked passage on a boat to head back to Rivain, and as she passed through the docks she saw Qunari. With a bit of time to kill, she slipped towards where they had been set up, just after crashing, and she made her polite greetings, inquiring if there was anything the Arishok needed sent or taken back. Slipping back out, she took the ship back to Rivain and turned herself into the re-educators.   
  
A year later, she was sent back out, this time to Orlais, where she stayed in Val Royeaux’s alienage. Utterly disgusted by the quality of life, and the conditions these elves lived in, she started once again to doubt if there was anything that the Qun could do for these people. They’d been fighting with Tevinter for so long, and they’d gained no ground, and nothing was being done to help these poor people. They were more like to be killed on their way trying to reach Rivain or Par Vollen, and especially in Val Royeaux, everyone was so far under the Chantry’s thumb she doubted she’d be able to help. The hypocrisy of it all, of the Chantry, of the Qun, all of it was making her doubt everything she had learned, everything she had stood for, until she realized there was no way she could continue living her life like this. Not when she witnessed Templars entering the Alienage to seek out a mage child, and instead of taking them to the Circle, attempted to kill them.  
  
 _There are other paths. They do not all need to lead to the same destination,_ her recruiter and trainer had told her. But it didn’t matter, there was no talking to the Templars. The Elves could do nothing, they were not armed, and feared retribution. So she fought them herself, killed them herself, and allowed them to take her. Not that she stayed in the cell long, they had missed a set of lock picks, and soon she was gone like a shadow in the night. She could not go back to Kont-aar, nor back to Rivain at all. She couldn’t stay in Val Royeaux, so she had to leave. She sent one final message, just before her twentieth birthday, at the dead drop, and left.  
  
Two months later a pair of poorly trained assassins came after her, and it seemed that it was more a formality, than an actual attempt on her life, as she walked away with only a long cut on her stomach, one dead, and the other fled, an equally nasty wound on his face. Now she was officially Tal-Vashoth. What could she do? 

Stumbling into the forest she'd been ambushed in, she walked looking for what she wasn't sure. A place to lie down and die? Or perhaps someone to come help her. She had heard in the Alienage that there were clans of elves who lived and survived out here, who would take those who wanted away from humans, but she very much doubted she would find one. As she was just about to laugh at the thought, a blade pressed against her neck. She thought perhaps this was it.

But no, it was not another Viddithari or a Qunari, but an elf. A hunter by their clothes, and soon she was being carried on a litter some place. When she awoke, she could not say what day it was, or how long she'd been there, but her clothes had been changed and her wound had been tended to. It was almost too good for Amara.

As she healed, she learned more of these people, of their beliefs and how they worked. When she could sit for longer periods of time and not hurt herself, she asked for tasks to make herself useful, and as she grew stronger and could walk and stand without further injury, she asked to learn more. Soon she was being taken on hunts, and she proved to be an efficient hunter. She earned another scar on her unmarred face by taking down a bear that injured another clansman. Soon it came to light she was not meant to stay with this clan, but to go to another that was in need of strong hunters and those who were willing to fight Shem until they fled or died, instead of just long enough to flee.

It was with this clan she found a home, and a path she could walk knowing it was what she was to be doing. There she was given her Vallaslin, to Dirthamen of all the gods. Her Keeper just smiled when she asked why, and told her to think about it for a moment. Deshanna, it seemed, knew more than she let on about her newest Hunt Leader.


End file.
